Leftfield / Experimental Recommendations August 2015

Review: He may remain as busy as ever as a live performer, but it's been some two years since Lewis Roberts last graced the shelves of records stores with a new Koreless 12" (although he did contribute to a RSD release from Young Turks this year). A mark of a true artist is to never stand still, for your sound to demonstrate a tangible level of progression so it's refreshing to see Koreless experimenting with a more club focussed sound on this 12" and move away from the cinematic textures of his last record Yugen. Both "TT" and "Love" are malleable tracks that could be combined with percussive DJ tools to devastating effect.

Review: A cult Brazilian band at their peak in the 1980s, Finis Africae represent the pinnacle of what post punk and its experimental offshoots reached for in South America. A lot of this compilation focuses on sprawling tracks that feature distant shapeless vocals, lightly pattering percussion and languid guitar, but cuts such as "Radio Tarifa" shimmy with the upstart angles of disco-not-disco at its finest, shot through with a salsa flair. Twisting and turning from child-sung folk to industrial-tinged instrumentals, through slow-pumping indie jangle and so much more besides, you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised at many turns discovering one of the hidden gems of the other side of the world.

Review: Kompakt main man and ambient maestro Wolfgang Voigt served up some of his finest work yet on the Ruckverzauberung album a couple of years ago. Now Astral Industries treats us to a live recording of said album, taken from Voigt's performance at Hackney venue St Johns Church in March last year. The dark and brooding soundscapes of this modern classical exploration take on a new and dynamic dimension as his immersive compositions of haunting, densely layered strings and sinister swirling pads transport you to another world, behind the mirror. A fine release from Astral Industries.

Review: Current scene favourite Nils Frahm teamed up with Icelandic multi-instrumentalist Olafur Arnalds on three breath taking excursions through lush ambient textures on "Stare" as a surprise release back in 2012 for label founder Robert Rath. "A1" features Frahm's entrancing irresistible melody over some gorgeous all-consuming strings and glacial soundscapes courtesy of Arnalds. "A2" with its heavenly, transcendental beauty has just got to be heard while "B1" explores darker territory with its excavating soundscapes accompanying the most hauntingly delicate cello notes. Exquisite!

Review: Firecracker Recordings continue to enjoy a most wonderful 2015 with Mac Talla Nan Creag the end result of several artists affiliated with the Edinburgh label spending some time in the Scottish highlands recording with traditional instruments, hardware and no small amount of Whisky! Lord Of The Isles, Other Lands, House Of Traps and local Edinburgh folk artist Wounded Knee are involved in one form or other throughout this illuminating 15 track collection. "NM 8222 0270" and 'NO 6594 9300' are lush ambient works reminiscent of Pete Namlook, whilst "Thrun' is droney feedback in the same vein as Rrose's recent LP for Further. "Forever played" and "Grugaigian Chant" are the perfect culmination of folk and electronics that this album can offer. All in all brilliant compilation that pays homage to the country's traditional music yet presenting in a modern electronic format. Highly recommended!

Review: The legendary John Beltran returns with another masterpiece on Delsin. A master producer whose career has spanned everything from Detroit techno and electronica to Latin music, his attempt at ambient is equally well executed. The breath taking "Music for Machines" with its droning mechanical soundscape and beautiful transcending strings. "Orange Background" and its factory sounds accompanying a repetitive resonance. Beltran's emotive and sombre piano sound plays a large part and he does it tremendously on "Many Moments to Come" as well as the memorable "Love Suspended". All in all a brilliant effort and contender for one of the finest albums this year.

Review: Analogue synthesizer enthusiast Bezier first surfaced on Dark Entries in 2012, delivering the hard-wired retro-futurist fantasy Ensconced. Two years on, he's finally ready to release the follow-up, the similarly sharp and sci-fi themed Telemores. As with his previous output, the influences are obvious - think Radiophonic Workshop, electro, minimal, new wave and Italo-disco - but he smartly steers clear of pastiche and empty revivalism. Instead, we're treated to a range of dancefloor-friendly instrumental cuts, cyborg jams, and intoxicating robot rinse-outs. Closer "Fukushima", in which he doffs a cap to the synthesized horror-disco of John Carpenter, is particularly potent.

Review: You can always trust Johnny Trunk to come up with the most obscure material from the soundtrack quarters, and he's bloody done it again with this latest oddity from the early 1980's. There is little to nothing that we know about Alan Jefferson, the musician behind this Galactic Nightmare LP, apart from the fact that he made wavy sci-fi music in his room on cheap analogue equipment. Although this material never actually made an official release back in its years of conception (1979-1985), it was released on a series of cassettes for computer magazines back in the 80's - proper Trunk material at its best! Jefferson's jams are lively and playful, sometimes verging on italo disco, and floating somewhere between Pac-man sounds and B-movie soundtrack music. To be honest, this should be owned purely for its place in time, a decade which probably contains a huge amount of lost music due to the advent of home recording.

Review: Having evolved into an artist independent of scene driven trends, New Zealand's Fis makes the move to his debut album with an assured instinct for unconventional noise and ambience. Loopy is an appropriate home for such concerns, and The Blue Quicksand Is Going Now follows a logical path from previous appearances on Tri Angle and Void Coms. You can find thin slithers of rhythm tucked away in the likes of "Social" with its cloying layers of sonic mulch buffeted along by encrusted beats, while elsewhere the synths provide the guiding light on tracks such as "Happy Alone", resplendent in its regal avant-garde splendour.

Review: We hadn't really come to terms with the fact that Benjamin Brunn has actually released a huge number of LP's, a whopping eight excluding this latest beauty for the equally stupendous Kimochi label. The man has been releasing quality deep house since the late '90s, and he's featured on labels such as Third Ear, but this latest LP is just about as mesmerizing as he can get. Floating between the fine lines that separate ambient and deep house, Brunn's ten tracks work as a unit and stand out as one single production session rather than separate, non-affiliated 'trax'. Throughout our journey listening to Drop, our favourite moments have to be "Nobody Knows" for its sci-fi ambience and sparse percussion shots, the drones of "Like The Course Of A Conversation", the minimal electro-acoustic wails of "Our Children & Grandchildren", and the absurdly abstract "Lying Flat Looking Up". What a release from Kimochi. Recommended.

Review: Icelandic music producer Bjork, who requires absolutely no introduction given her massive contribution to electronic pop music over the last twenty years, finally returns with her new album Vulnicura on One Little Indian Records. Although the LP represents her breakup with Matthew Barney, there are vivid rays of light nested among the more dreary-eyed vocals and melodies. As per usual with her work, there is a distinctive personal touch to her songs. This is most vividly characterised by the droning style of her singing, a sort of juxtaposition when combined to the music below it. Expect an intricate blend of sci-fi electronics, break-ridden power beats and of course, plenty of hard ambience. Bjork's ninth studio album is another winner. (Limited deluxe edition gatefold coloured vinyl 2xLP + MP3 download code)

Review: Apart from the host of his own local labels such as Viewlexx and Pinkman, Vincent Koreman aka Drvg Cvltvre has also branched out to other European labels such as the present Clasicos Del Ruido. The Spanish label has only put out a handful of EP's prior to this latest outing, one of which consisted of industrial synth-pop sounds by Medio Escinico, so Koreman's appearance is a welcomed surprise! The Dutchman comes through with the gargling, pseudo-electro rhythm that is "Komische Urkfraft", a chilling set of hypnotic keys backed by a broken drum machine pattern on "There's A Shadow Inside Of You", and the furious "Juggling Knives", a steady techno belter verging onto 303-laced madness. Strong and utterly nasty.

Review: For his last outing on Hospital Productions, Nine Inch Nails collaborator Alessandro Cortini utilized just two pieces of equipment: a Roland MC-202 and a delay pedal. For this follow-up, he's expanded his toolbox a little, supplementing those hardware pieces with two further machines: a Roland TR-606 and TB-303. Musically, Risveglio inhabits a similar space to its predecessor, with Cortini creating blurry, fluid dreamscapes built around semi-rhythmic loops, distorted chords and fuzzy ambient textures. Listeners may struggle to spot the TB-303 - most often used to create ragged waves of intense electronics - such is the unique way in which Cortini manipulates it. Regardless, the Italian's post-industrial, half-awake soundscapes are thoroughly mesmerizing.

Review: Off the back of her new Vulnicura LP, Bjork has already received the remix treatment from a number of artists, namely Lotic, Untold, and now Mica Levi. Unlike many of the other commissions, Mica's self-styled Kareokieijd transformation of "Lionsong" takes a much darker path, and can essentially be seen as an electro acoustic cover version. The track is vast and cinematic, cerebral and eye-opening, where strings gather momentum only to be engulfed in a sea of deep, luscious atmospherics. A fitting remix to Bjork's inimitable style.

Review: Belgrade's Discom inaugurates its new catalogue with a rather special debut, an anthology by forgotten Serbian artist Misa Mihajlovic AKA Max Vincent. Due to the war-torn state of Yugoslavia back in the mid '80s and through to the late '90s, Vincent's synth jams never made it out of his recording studio, and although he was known in certain circles, the then young producer was simply not able to get his music out there. Luckily, Discom have compiled material from Vincent's library that was made between 1984 and 2002, quite a large gap in time. In this album, you can hear Vincent's love for 80's electronic music and the cutting-edge of the time, bands like Kraftwerk on the opener "OStavi Sve", the influences of EBM over tracks like "Beogradska Devojka", and plenty of synth-pop all over many corners of the album. The slow, wavy and pensive "Noc Pored Reke Nil" is also a winner. Recommended, don't snooze!

Review: Lumiere Noire is a new series from Kill The DJ overseen by co-founder Chloe Thevenin, with the inaugural edition of the self-styled "stroboscopic collection" introducing local Parisian duo Il Est Vilaine. Formed of Simon Says and Florent, Il Est Vilaine arrive on KTDJ following a breakout 12" for Dialect last year and the three productions on Lumiere Noire offer a diversity in sound that you expect from Ivan Smagghe and Thevenin's label. Lead track "Surf Rider" is a wave-infused acid builder that's already got the Pachanga Boys seal of approval whilst "Lies" sounds like a prime Smagghe set opener. "Peyote" ends on a similar note and is perhaps the best of the lot!

Review: Thanks to the Ajukaja & Andrevski 12"s for Jon Rust's Levels label, a lot more people are now clued up to the electronic scene in Estonia and Raul 'Ajukaja' Saaremets role in it. The Tallinn-based selector, radio host and artist also oversees the Porridge Bullet label and their latest release is a retrospective trawl through the archives of Hypnosaurus, a pioneering Estonian electronic act. It's no surprise to find out Saaremets served time as part of Hypnosaurus, but 1991-1992 draws the focus to the group's formative years with founding member Aivar Tonso and drummer Railo Pals. With just ten tracks, Porridge Bullet effectively demonstrate how ahead of the game Hypnosaurus were with the mood swerving from Rezzett style crackling ambience to lo-fi house rattlers, fuzzed out techno and gloopy primitive electronics. An astounding listen.

Review: Towards the end of last year, Italians Do It Better man Johnny Jewel quietly took to SoundCloud and unveiled a series of unreleased recordings from the Chromatics album Kill For Love. Entitled Running From The Sun, the eight track set promptly sent the internet into meltdown which is perhaps the reason why IDIB have decided to grant it a proper deluxe vinyl issue. According to Jewel, these tracks date from between late 2009 and late 2011 and will be considered a must for any Chromatics completists out there. As ever the balance between Jewel's compositional excellence and Ruth Radlett's distant delivery is perfectly pitched.

Review: Second Layer's World of Rubber, first released on Cherry Red way back in 1981 - some two years after the duo's first outing on 7" - has long been considered something of an industrial classic by those in the know. Here, it gets a deserved re-press from the folks at Dark Entries. 34 years on, it still retains the power to shock, with Adrian Borland and Graham Green's raw, weighty mix of post-punk basslines, sharp guitars, fuzzy electronics, tape loops and basic drum machine grooves still sounding deliciously fresh. Certainly, it's comparable to many more celebrated releases of the time, and arguably more spontaneous in feel.

Review: Alessio Natalizia's Not Waving moniker goes from strength to strength, even since ending his collaboration with Sam Willis in the highly regarded Walls project. Now focusing on the textured, modular workouts and cinematic synth journeys seen on the brilliant two previous albums Umwelt and Human Capabilities, he returns with his most ambitious outing yet. This double LP gathers together all the material Natalizia issued on the cassette series of the same name and is a must for those who like their electronics immersive to the max. From the retro futurism of "Witzelsucht" and "It Needs No Medication" to the brazen industrial attitude of "The Behaviourist Approach" and "Creating Capabilities" there are many moods of his musical identity that he explores here. But for most part its the beauty in the soulful mechanical soundscapes that he creates on this imaginary soundtrack, particularly on "Part of Thought", "Dangerously Well" and "Negative Reinforcement".

Review: The Loose Control Band, a duo made up of Jason Drummond and Jonah Sharp, are an American outfit that deal in everything from deep house to thrash metal. Yes, we know, that is kind of mad. Their latest single sees them return to the equally versatile and multi-faceted Golf Channel label, this time with the 12" single "It's Hot", starting with the punky, nowave Columbus Hotel mix, followed by an injection of tribal 808 beats on the B-side's Bonus mix, and the totally punked-out original version, a stuttering garage tune for the heads. This is seriously sick, don't miss it.

Review: Low key Dutch producer Mokona is clearly developing something of a relationship with the Templar Sound label. He first featured on the Sydney label's 2012 compilation and last year saw them issue his "Untitled" collaboration with Ruff Sqwad's Rapid through their White Label offshoot. Breathless finds Mokona debuting on the main Templar Sound label and the four track 12" will resonate with anyone that has been tuning into his Nocturnal Emissions show for Radar Radio or last year's Yamaneko album for Local Action. For the most part this is spacious and luxuriant ambient music you want to sink into, with the hazed out Jam City stylings of "Inner City Test Run" the closest Mokona gets to the dancefloor.

Review: New York's Felte label is famed around our parts for knowing how to put together a collaborative EP, but this latest joining of forces from the Flaamingos and The KVB is simply right on the money! The former are a household band who have appeared repeatedly on the label, an outfit who share a post-punk sensibility, while the latter are a Berlin-based duo who indulge in dark and brooding club music that's strangely free of any genre tags. The A-side features three tracks from the band, where the wonderful "Naomi" steals the limelight thanks to its melancholic mood and driving percussive beats, while the flip contains three slabs of moodier, vocal-filtered electronica; our pick has to be "Still Warm" for its early eighties Mancunian edge. Deep and mesmerising!